New study finds majority of bets made were by problem gamblers

By George Velky
March 2024

Connecticut’s first gam­bling study since 2009 con­clud­ed that more than 70% of bets made in 2023 were by a small frac­tion of prob­lem gam­blers.

Peo­ple who rec­og­nize that they have a gam­bling prob­lem can sign up for a “vol­un­tary self-exclu­sion list,” said Kait­lyn Kras­selt, direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Con­necti­cut Depart­ment of Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion. This list pre­vents users from cre­at­ing an account with the online gam­ing plat­forms in Con­necti­cut, she said.

“When you’re putting your­self on that list you’re say­ing, “I need to take a time­out, I need to step away from this, and I need to put some­thing in place that pre­vents me from being able to change my mind,””” said Kras­selt.

Frank Piliero, a UConn senior and self-iden­ti­fied at-risk gam­bler, said he had nev­er heard of a self-exclu­sion list. He said, “I feel like casi­no’s would­n’t want you to know that exists.”

The Con­necti­cut Depart­ment of Men­tal Health and Addic­tion Ser­vices paid Gem­i­ni Research to con­duct the study. It found that 51% of all sports bets came from the 1.8% of the pop­u­la­tion that iden­ti­fied as prob­lem gam­blers. 

Most of the total mon­ey spent on gam­ing in the state came from a small per­cent­age of active gam­blers as well. Gem­i­ni Research found that 75% of all gam­bling expen­di­ture came from just over 5% of peo­ple who gam­ble in the state.

Kras­selt did not know how much the study cost the depart­ment, but said a law was passed that man­dat­ed the study. 

This was the first study that observed gam­bling in Con­necti­cut since the state legal­ized sports bet­ting in 2021. The data col­lect­ed for the sur­veys of the pop­u­la­tion was gath­ered between Jan­u­ary and August of 2023.

Three online sports­books are avail­able in the state. Fan­Du­el is part­nered with Mohe­gan Sun, DraftK­ings, in asso­ci­a­tion with Fox­woods, and Fanat­ics Sports­book, which has an affil­i­a­tion with the Con­necti­cut Lot­tery Cor­po­ra­tion (CLC) as of Dec. 2023, accord­ing to Fanat­ics.

Along with sports bet­ting fea­tures, Fan­Du­el and DraftK­ings have online casi­nos where users can play casi­no games such as black­jack, slots, roulette and more. Fanat­ics sports­book does not have an online casi­no in Con­necti­cut.

Sports bet­ting account­ed for 10.2% of gam­bling in the state in 2023, accord­ing to the study. The largest gam­bling medi­ums in 2023 were “any past year gam­bling” at 69.2% and “week­ly lot­ter­ies” at 51.6%, accord­ing to the study. Sports bet­ting ranked ninth. 

When asked about the dif­fer­ent kinds of gam­bling he’d par­tic­i­pat­ed in in 2023, Piliero said, “Basi­cal­ly any­thing under the sun.” Pri­mar­i­ly, he said he played casi­no games in per­son and online, as well as online sports bet­ting. “You can bet on any­thing nowa­days, it’s messed up,” he said. “I bet on a Youtube livestream of a celebri­ty pok­er tour­na­ment.” 

The sports bet­ting gross gam­ing rev­enue was $178 mil­lion from Octo­ber 2021 to June 2023, which projects to rough­ly $102 mil­lion over 12 months, accord­ing to the study. Online casi­no rev­enue was $416 for those same 21 months, which would equate to about $238 mil­lion over a 12 month peri­od, the study said.

The mon­ey made by the CLC is allo­cat­ed to the state’s gen­er­al fund. Most of the trib­al rev­enue is kept by the tribes, but Con­necti­cut tax­es online sports bet­ting at 13.75% and online casi­no gam­bling at 18%, accord­ing to the study, so some of the trib­al rev­enue does go to the state.

The state has a rel­a­tive­ly aver­age prob­lem gam­bling rate of 1.8%, com­pared to 2.8% in New Jer­sey and 0.7% in New York (which was “anom­alous­ly low” because the study for that state was con­duct­ed dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, accord­ing to Gem­i­ni).

The study con­clud­ed that “treat­ment resources cur­rent­ly avail­able are more than ade­quate to meet the demand,” for prob­lem gam­blers seek­ing help.

That being said, many prob­lem gam­blers were found to be hes­i­tant when seek­ing help from oth­er peo­ple. Over a quar­ter of prob­lem gam­blers who admit­ted they tried to get bet­ter on their own said they did so because they did not think that treat­ment would work. Piliero said, “Its because they don’t want to admit to some­one else that they have a prob­lem.  You have to have a cer­tain lev­el of con­fi­dence to do that because it is such a demor­al­iz­ing thing to do.” 

Numer­ous resources and out­reach pro­grams in the state avail­able for peo­ple strug­gling with gam­bling addic­tion. Kras­selt men­tioned the Con­necti­cut Prob­lem Gam­bling helpline as an easy place to start get­ting sup­port. 

She said, “The casi­nos in our state, as well as the gam­ing plat­forms them­selves, they also offer resources.” They have their own self-exclu­sion lists, sep­a­rate from state-pro­vid­ed ones. Users can sub­scribe to a self-exclu­sion list for one year, five years or a life­time, accord­ing to Kras­selt.

Piliero said the only resource he was aware of was the helpline. 

Online gam­bling plat­forms are required to put pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures in place on their apps such as a timer that tracks how long users have been on their app, noti­fi­ca­tions when users spend a cer­tain amount of mon­ey, and a func­tion that logs users out after fif­teen min­utes of inac­tiv­i­ty on the apps, accord­ing to Kras­selt. 

These mea­sures are in place “so that peo­ple are real­ly aware of how much time and mon­ey they’re spend­ing on the plat­form,” Kras­selt said. “That can help peo­ple rec­og­nize that maybe it’s been too much, and they need to step away.”

Kras­selt also said that the depart­ment and the Con­necti­cut Coun­cil on Prob­lem Gam­bling (CCPG) “offer a lot of great resources.” The CCPG holds free aware­ness and pre­ven­tion events online and in per­son all around the state, accord­ing to the CCPG web­site.

These orga­ni­za­tions empha­size edu­ca­tion and out­reach to make sure peo­ple are get­ting infor­ma­tion on respon­si­ble gam­bling. “We’re also in con­ver­sa­tions with schools and uni­ver­si­ties to make sure that that infor­ma­tion is get­ting to young peo­ple who are becom­ing eli­gi­ble to sign up for these accounts,” said Kras­selt.